Much of life can never be explained, only witnessed
NAIROBI (AFP ) – A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa , officials said. The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean , then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.
“It is incredible… A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a ‘mother’,” ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP.
“After it was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother.
Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together,” the ecologist added.
“The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother,” Kahumbu added.
“The hippo is a young baby; he was left at a very tender age, and, by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years,” he explained.
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
This is a real story that shows that our differences don’t matter much when we need the comfort of another. We could all learn a lesson from these two creatures of God.
“Look beyond the differences and find a way to walk the path together. Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.”

Any port for a storm
THE SEX life of Octopoteuthis deletron is a cruel hit-or-miss affair, according to candid footage of the deep-sea squid in its element, unveiled today.
No foreplay, no tender caresses, no fond farewells until the next union, just a desperate drive to reproduce, followed by a glancing quickie and an early death.
And that’s when things go well.
Scientists suspect that some specimens can drift a lifetime without ever encountering a potential sex-partner, much less a soul-mate.
Here the problem: It’s dark. That may not be an impediment to intimacy in an aquarium, but in the open sea at 800 metres (2,600 feet), it can make the search for companionship long and lonely.
“In the deep, dark habitat where O. deletron lives, potential mates are few and far between,” a team of researchers note in a study published in the journal, ‘Biology Letters’.
And even when these solitary, bug-eyed cephalopods do run into each other, they probably can’t tell a he-squid from she-squid, prompting males to proposition the first shapely body that comes along, no matter what its sex.
That, in any case, is what Hendrik Hoving of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California and colleagues suspected when they set out to film the creatures in their natural setting.
O. deletron’s reproductive cycle was already known. During opposite-sex mating, males use a long tentacle-like appendage — a penis of sorts — to deposit small sperm-laden sacs, called spermatangia, onto females.
The sacs release sperm into the female’s tissue, et voila! the cycle begins anew, leaving the males to die shortly after a single reproductive act.
But Hoving had noticed empty spermatangia on the surface of dead males caught in fishing nets, and wondered how they got there.
To find out, he used remotely-operated vehicles to explore the deep waters — 400 to 800 metres — of Monterey Submarine Canyon off the central California coast.
The video footage captured 108 individuals, but scientists could only identify the sex of 39 squid (19 females and 20 males), according to the study.
None were caught in flagrante delicto, but the riddle was solved: 19 of them — nine boy squids and 10 girl squids — had clusters of spermatangia attached to their bodies, front and back.
“Males were as likely to be found mated, as females,” the study concluded.
The sperm-carrying sex, in other words, “routinely and indiscriminately mates with both males and females.”
In evolutionary terms, a “shot in the dark,” as the researchers called it, would not seem to make much sense.
But the costs involved in wasting sperm on another male are probably smaller than the costs of developing courtship, or the ability to discriminate between sexes.
One thing is sure, they concluded.
“This behaviour further exemplifies the ‘live fast, die young’ life strategy of many cephalopods.”

Risen from the dead
TWO Transkei families are  claiming that a youth in his  20s, who was found wandering in the Engcobo villages last  month, is their son.
Now the families are turning to technology for assistance, and will use DNA testing to identify the ‘mystery man’.
A family from Engcobo’s Manzamdaka village said the young man was their son, who had miraculously returned after he ‘died’ in a drowning accident 12 years ago.
However, a second family from Mthatha’s Baziya village said he was their ‘problematic’ son who had gone missing last month.
The Engcobo family say his name is Nceba Apleni, and was  born in 1985, while the Baziya family claim he is Andile Petela, and was born in 1983.
Both families say he had identifying features – such as birthmarks – which confirmed him as their son.
The confusion started last month when the young man, who is said to be mentally challenged, wandered into a traditional healer’s home in Msintsana village in Engcobo.
The healer, Dumile Kwaza, said he was hungry, dehydrated and couldn’t speak.
“He emerged from the bushes behind our house, and he looked like a person who went missing a  long time ago. I called villagers, and they told me he’s from the Apleni family and had ‘died’ 12 years ago,” said Kwaza. “They (the Aplenis) positively identified him.”
Nowinala Apleni said her son had drowned in a shallow dam while playing with friends in 1999.  She heard about a person who could be their son, and went to  investigate.
“I was shocked. It was him; it was my son,” she said. “My husband, family elders and siblings all saw him…We checked every mark he had before he died, and we positively identified him.”
Asked who they had buried in 2009 if that was the case, Apleni said the family was not sure.
A family elder, Zimisele Apleni, who saw the body being retrieved from the river in 1999 after the  drowning, said: “I was there when he was retrieved from the water …  His father came and identified him, and we buried him.”
A villager, Lungile Mfeketho, also believed the Apleni’s son had risen from the dead.
“There’s no doubt about this; that’s the boy. He has mysteriously risen from the dead,” said Mfeketho.